User blog:DaDoctorWhoFan/The Making of Panopticon Series 7
So, I’m planning to start writing a blog about each episode of ‘What if Doctor Who Wasn’t Axed?’ ''as I release them from now on, to give you a little insight into the thought process behind the episodes and just the general making of – we’ll see how long this lasts, but let’s be optomisitic for now. The creative process for ''Panopticon Series 7 began a long, long time ago. I guess we knew how we were going to end it from around the time of planning ''Panopticon Series 4, ''which was released last October, but we were planning from about two months before. Once we had the big ''Endgame ''cliffhanger locked in place, we pretty much had the idea to bring the Doctor back in this way straight away. We didn’t initially know exactly how we would do it, but we knew that it’d have something to do with Will, and he or she, at that point, would be brought back in the very last episode of Panopticon, or the penultimate (again we weren’t quite sure). Samantha Bond was cast last July, when I was on a very long walk home from something, which ended up lasting about 2 hours, and I had nothing to do, so I skype called Matt on my phone and I spoke to him while I walked – it was about half way through that journey, that I had a ‘light-bulb’ moment and just said to Matt, Samantha Bond, and instantly it was a yes. We did have some other actors in consideration beforehand, both male and female – actually most of them were male, there were only 3 women (including Samantha Bond) in consideration. I won’t name any of them at the moment, just in case we decide to use them again in the future, or if we cast them as someone else at some point. Towards the end of 2018, was when we actually knew exactly what we were going to do with Phaedra (or Cordale, whatever you prefer) and Will – it seems so obvious on reflection, but we spent ages trying to make all of it work, and all of it slot into place. Thankfully, we did it and it’s turned out pretty well – although I’m sure ''the Boy Who Holds the Keys ''will rip it to shreds in his infamous reviews of the series (which I am very much looking forward to). Actual writing on Panopticon Series 7 began on the 3rd March 2019, a long, long time ago… I started it at the same time I started writing Cold Front Series 2, in a somewhat laughable attempt to get both videos out in March. Ironically, Cold Front Series 2 came out in April, and as I’m writing this, it’s very likely that Panopticon Series 7 will come out at the very end of May. It’d be no exaggeration however, that this was because, Panopticon Series 7 has probably been the hardest WIDWWA video to write, personally. Unlike with Leftover or Rebel Zero, or anything really on Doctor Who, I’ve had to wrap up seven series of plot lines and character arcs, which is very hard – it looks easy, I thought it would be, but it really isn’t – I do not envy people like Chris Chibnall, or RTD or any professional TV writer, as I have found out how hard it really is, and I haven’t even had to write scripts, I’ve just been breaking the stories! I finally finished the writing process on the 24th May 2019, which means this is the longest the scripting process has taken on any of my videos – in fact the script is 7635 words longer, a whole 2665 words longer than the script for Panopticon Series 6. The video is also 12 minutes longer, meaning basically, I’ve had to cram a lot of stuff in… Also don’t forgot, that Series 7 only had 8 episodes too, so if it had it’s usual 10 then god-knows how long the video would be. Anyway, I’m going to get onto some more editing of Panopticon Series 7, so this can hopefully be released tomorrow, as I am writing this, and you’ll see this appear magically on the wiki. Until the next time, goodbye. Category:Blog posts